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Staige Davis Blackford (1931–2003)

Staige Blackford was a journalist,
writer, and editor. While he is best known for his twenty-nine-year tenure as
editor-in-chief of the Virginia Quarterly Review, his career before that was varied and ranged from working at the Central
Intelligence Agency to serving on Virginia governor Linwood Holton's cabinet as press secretary and
speech writer. Throughout his life Blackford worked for civil rights and against
the politics of segregation
and white supremacy. MORE...

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Blackford was born on January 3, 1931, in Charlottesville,
Virginia, to Staige Davis Blackford (1898–1949) and Lydia Fishburne Blackford.
Raised in Charlottesville, Blackford attended the Episcopal High School and the
University of Virginia. As an undergraduate, Blackford served as president of the Raven Society, an
organization dedicated to preserving the memory of Edgar Allan Poe, who briefly attended the
university, and to the achievement of scholarship and academic excellence.
Blackford also worked as editor-in-chief of the Cavalier
Daily, the University of Virginia's student-run newspaper. In 1952, he
ran an editorial titled "Scholastic Segregation" that challenged the
university's policy of segregation. This editorial led to the first public
debate on desegregation at the University of Virginia.

Graduating in 1952 with honors, Blackford went on to receive a second bachelor's
degree as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, completing his degree in 1954.
Blackford then departed briefly from scholarly pursuits in order to serve in the
United States Air Force and the CIA for several years. Following this stint,
Blackford returned to his writing and editing roots, working for Time magazine and, later, as editor of the Louisiana
State University Press. In 1958, Blackford married Bettina Balding, with whom he
later had two daughters, Linda Balding and Sheila Mason.

Early in the 1960s, Blackford continued the civil rights work he began at the Cavalier Daily by taking a job as research director for
the Southern Regional Council, a civil rights organization. In 1964, Blackford
relocated to Norfolk, where he
took a post as chief political reporter for the Virginian-Pilot. It was during this time that Blackford met Linwood Holton—a largely
left-leaning Republican candidate for governor of Virginia. This association led
lifelong Democrat Blackford to take a position in Holton's administration as
press secretary and speech writer from 1970 until 1974. Blackford has been
credited with greatly influencing Holton's progressive racial politics during
what was a difficult period in the history of race relations in the United
States. Blackford has said that he was happiest in his professional life during
his time working in the political sphere.

In 1975, after completing his term with
Holton, Blackford returned to Charlottesville and became editor of the
University of Virginia's Virginia Quarterly Review.
Blackford's predecessors included Charlotte Kohler, James Southall Wilson, Stringfellow Barr, and Lambert Davis (who is
probably best known as Robert Penn Warren's editor for All the
King's Men). A notable academic literary journal, VQR had already gained national stature before Blackford took it over.
In an interview, Blackford explained, "I inherited from [the previous editor]
one of our foremost intellectual beacons and my job is to keep that beacon
shining."

Tasked with respecting the successful history of the journal, Blackford made few
big changes, yet he managed to develop the journal into a highly regarded
publication, which, over the years, showcased such writers as Ann Beattie, Nancy Hale, William Hoffman, Ward
Just, Joyce Carol Oates, Robert Olen Butler, and Peter Taylor, and gained even greater fame for
running a previously unpublished short story by William Faulkner.

On June 23, 2003, one week before he was set to retire, Blackford died in a car
accident in Charlottesville. He left behind three projects on which he was about
to begin work: writing his memoir, a book for those suffering from problems with
vision (as he was), and a biography of Virginius Dabney.

Major Works

Articles

"Scholastic Segregation" in the Cavalier Daily
(1952)

Scholarly Journal

Virginia Quarterly Review, 51 to 79 (editor,
1975–2003)

Time Line

January 3, 1931
- Staige Blackford is born in Charlottesville.

1952
- Staige Davis Blackford graduates from the University of Virginia with honors.